1

The Redundancy of Design History

Guy Julier and Viviana Narotzky, 1998
This paper was presented at the 'Practically Speaking' Conference at Wolverhampton University in
December 1998.
Abstract
At the inception of art and design as a degree subject in 1961, the 20% of historical and theoretical
studies they incorporated was what was meant to give it its Honours status. Traditionally, then,
design history, in particular at undergraduate level, has provided the contextualisation for research
practice. Meanwhile design history itself has developed as an autonomous academic discipline. This
in turn gave rise to the development of design history and the new art history in the early 1970s. By
the the early 1980s design history had firmly established itself with the potential to be a stand-alone
subject.
The result of this development has been that the preoccupations of design historians have
increasingly divorced themselves from design practice. Meanwhile, design practice has sought a
more complex and challenging set of paradigms. This paper contends that whilst this autonomy may
be advantagous for its own terms, it renders the subject no longer viable as either the provider of
useful empirical data for or theoretical approaches to design practice and research. In short, design
practice both as a field of academic enquiry and as a profession has outstripped the paradigms and
critiques of design history.
This paper was prompted by conversations with a member of the editorial board of a respected
academic journal on design. He was dismayed to find that, according to the research we were
presenting to the journal, no amount of radical design history was affecting the on-the-ground
experience and practice of design undergraduates... Can the same be said for academic research in
design at other levels?
The structure of the paper is as follows: the historiography of British design to date; a review of
some key branches of its historiography which might be of relevance to contemporary design
research and discussion of their efficacy; discussion of the relationship of history and discourse;
discussion of relevant trends in design research.

The Redundancy of Design History

This paper is mischievous and ungrateful. We
are so-called second generation design
historians, taught in the 1980s by the first
generation design historians. They in turn
became established in the 1970s. We would
also precariously describe ourselves as design
practitioners in that we are involved in the
teaching, research, commissioning or
management of design.

We wish to demonstrate how so many

members of the older generation of our
extended family of design historians, and
some of their offspring, our cousins, are
dangerously out of touch with the activity
they seek to analyze. This nomadic tribe has
wandered so far from its roots that we
question whether design history has made
itself redundant as a contributor to paradigms
of practice.

2
The plot begins with an exchange of e.mails
between our colleagues Clegg and Mayfield
and an editor of the American design journal
Design Issues. They concerned responses to
an article submitted for consideration which
sought to argue that womens place in design
is still defined by patriarchal discourses of
creativity in education (Clegg and Mayfield
1999). The respondent was impressed by the
way their study drew on the real-life, realtime experience of young designers and that,
despite a decade of solid feminist scholarship
about design... there continues to be a gap
between the critically informed scholarship
about design and design history and the
popular perception of young women and men
attracted to design as a career (Doordan
1998). Thus, as the repondents surprise
testifies, those hopes of the historians
deconstruction and analysis are dashed
against the rocks of reality.
Of course, this failure of design history to
affect practice may be explained by the fact
that most designers, on the whole, dont read.
But some do, and particularly those engaged
in postgraduate or other research. So this
paper is not another clarion call to
practitioners to underpin their practice with
more history and theory. We have had
enough of such ill-defined, badly informed
invocations. Read? Read what? Appreciate
your traditions? Whose traditions? So, the key
problem is not more design history but better
design history.
Neither do we wish to critique design history
in itself. Much scholarly work has been
produced in the past 20 years to establish it as
a rich and varied academic discipline, of use to
social historians and museum curators. And
hey, some of our best friends are design
historians.
What is at stake here is a continued myth and
fetishization of modernism as a dominant
paradigm of design history which by default
skewers conceptions of design practice by
professionals and their public. Secondly, an
alternative narrative to modernism in design
discourse, derived from material culture and

consumption studies, falls short of a fully

rounded appreciation of contemporary
practice. We shall take each of these in turn.
Central to the historiography of design has
been the emplacement and refutation of
modernism. This dates back to Nikolaus
Pevsners Pioneers of the Modern Movement:
from William Morris to Walter Gropius first
published in 1936. It traced a linear,
progressive perception of design history; a
steady development of architectural style,
based on the work and aspirations of
individual architects and designers, from the
historicism of William Morris and the Arts and
Crafts movement to the machine aesthetic
of Walter Gropius and the Modern
Movement. In this book Pevsner established
the canon of form follows function as the
governing design ideology of the 20c. His view
no doubt reflects the dominance of German
art and architectural history wherein, as
Gropius himself professed, architecture is the
leading edge in the development of design.
This is common knowledge. But it is re-stated
because with this in mind, the yoke of Pevsner
becomes heavier the more one looks. Hardly a
design history text appears without
confirmation or refutation of the Pevsnerean
model of history. Of course many design
historians have become resistant to the
heroes of modern design approach-- the
relative merits of a biographical approach
have been long debated. More crucially,
however, this discussion has diverted
attention from their primary crime on their
insistence in a teleological conception of
history.
This again is derived from Pevsners Germanic
training. Essentially it strives to explain
everything in terms of an historical
inevitability. (As a footnote it is worth
reminding ourselves that the two words
historical inevitability are often tacked onto
the word socialism. This is a transposition of
Marxs notion of the historical inevitability of
class struggle. The popular misrepresentation
of Marx has a structural resonance in the
discussion within this paper since we also

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wish to divert attention back to processes
rather than outcomes.) A Pevsnerean account
therefore requires a selective, straightline
teological approach to history. Clearly his text
privileges modernism as the apotheosis of
design. At the end of the day, the fact that
this development is traced through a moral
debate carried by certain individuals has
probably more to do with the wordcount of
the book, the need to focus the narrative
down and keep it clear than to a lack of
breadth in Pevsners thinking.
Whilst many subsequent texts re-work
Pevsners narrative through different routes,
the structure remains the same. Sigfried
Gideons Mechanization Takes Command: A
Contribution to Anonymous History published
in 1948 eschews Pevsners great designers
view to foreground the history of industry,
technology and social customs. None the less,
the notion of progress towards a maturity
guides the narrative. Likewise Reyner
Banhams Theory and Design in the First
Machine Age of 1960 reworks notions of
functionalism, but still discusses the same
objects, people and lineage as Pevsner.
Design history in Britain was largely
established as a rejoinder to practice-based
undergraduate courses from the early 1970s
and the above texts provided the dominant
discourse. It is popularly understood that it
was tacked onto them in order to give them
degree-awarding status: they represented the
academic bit. Further folk history of this
period tells of staff being appointed to teach
this subject according to the number of
Thames & Hudson World of Art books they
had on their shelves. Additionally, in 1972 the
heavily Pevsnearean history of design units
were added to the Open University art history
course.
By the late-70s it was clear that the above
texts did not give sufficient detail to base a
day a weeks teaching on and the alternatives,
such as Bevis Hilliers style books, were
entertaining but did not necessarily raise
ethical questions about design. Thus
postgraduate courses were established to

develop the research framework and produce

more design history. A vigorous discussion
took place within design history circles at this
stage in order to establish the nature, shape
and boundaries of the discipline (see, for
instance, Dilnot 1984).
The modernist canon has been maintained
partly out of a genuine desire by design
historians to promote a political and social
agency into practice. Thus proto-modernist
occurences such as Utility design are
unearthed to lend credence to the possibility
that a reforming style is still possible (Attfield
1998). It is also interesting to note how the
historical analysis of eco-design is also
coloured by a modernist hue.
Meanwhile, Richard Buchanan (1998: 260)
reminds us of the vast void between the
aspirations of some reforming designers and
the activities of the consuming public. One
might add that there is also a yawning gap
between the the desires of design historians
and the actions of designers.
Modernism was not the only discourse at
stake in design history. But the time-lag of
research to publication to dissemination to
reproduction
ensured
the
continued
conspiracy. So whilst plenty of alternative
approaches may have been developed, the
insistent Bauhaus lecture is still anually
turned out on pre-degree art and design
courses. The damage is done early on.
At worst this has also maintained the form
follows function mantra-- a misused and
misunderstood adage if ever there was one -as the only discursive recourse for studiotutors and psuedo intellectual designers, hard
pressed to give scholarly kudos to their
activities.
This sustained damage may be due to the
ignorance of populist publishers who continue
to insist on glossy homages to modernism
(see for instance, Julier 1997). It may be the
popular medias recent discovery of
modernism as part of the aesthetic of New
Labours Cool Britannia. This system supports

4
what John Walker calls the canon of design,
whereby, the baton of genius or avant grade
innovation passes from the hand of one great
designer to the next in an endless chain of
achievement (Walker 1989: 63; see also
Bonta 1979). None the less it remains the
designers dream to appear in this kind of
book, which is the worst thing possible.
Writing a production-led history of design is
okay, but it is only of use to researchers in and
of design practice if the processes and objects
of design are accurately understood. Why
then, first of all, is design history dominated
by three-dimensional objects of a certain
type? Furniture design, and in particular the
chair has exercised design historians for
rather a long time and yet product design in
general only accounted for 8% of design
business in 1996 (Consultancy Survey 1996).
John Walker raises the rhetorical question as
to why design historians dont study military
weapons, police equipment or sexual aids-surely three great domains of user investment
in a planned product (Walker 1989: 33).
Furthermore, the vast majority of designers
are involved in the planning and
implementation of communications. Design is
about concepts, relationships, ideas and
processes. It is also a collaborative venture
which is supremely intradisciplinary, in that it
unites specialists in two and threedimensional communication, visual and
material culture, and it is interdisciplinary in
that it brings different professional domains
together. As Victor Margolin notes, Design
history...has not had much success in
engaging with current practice. These issues
involve
new
technologies,
innovative
collaborative
efforts
among
design
professionals, a concern with the impact of
complex products on users and the relations
between the design of material objects and
immaterial processes (Margolin 1995: 20).
Design practice and research-- and often they
are the same thing --is concerned with both
figuring out where it is going and also
providing interventions, inflections and
instruction on that direction. Design history
could provide useful structures to build in a

reflective component into this process.

However, the majority of production-led
models for the discussion of design in history
are so seriously flawed that it renders the
whole subject redundant for the practitioner.
In the meantime, the designers point of
reference continues to be Pevsners,
Banhams, McDermotts (1997) or Sparkes
(1998) heroes or heroines of modern design.
A recent dispondent correspondent with
Design Week wrote of designs very breath of
life (...) suffocated by perpetual mediocrity
and highly questionable work (Argent 1998).
So what was this design depressives point of
re-sale? How could design of Paul Rand and
Abram Games. Come on Patrick Argent of
Scarborough. Get real! Learn to love the
complexity of your activity. Embrace its
mediocrities. For only by understanding it as it
is can you grow from it. Youve obviously been
listening to how Rand, Games and probably
F.H.K. Henrion produced superb solutions to
problems rather than how they exploited the
institutional structures of design discoure, and
possibly the patience of their associates, in
order to legitimate and promote their
particular take on what good design should
be. Or perhaps, more benignly, they were
operators and pragmatists.
We do not wish to overplay these points
because it would churlishy disregard an
important counter-movement in design
history, the study of consumption. Deriving
from the new social history and
anthropology in this country and American
studies elsewhere, the sub-discipline seeks to
understand the experience and meaning of
design objects among their users. Its rise in
the mid-80s was concurrent with Thatchers
notions of consumer empowerment as part of
the Adam Smith Institute driven project of
sovereign individuals of late-capitalism.
Perhaps the key concept of use to designers
and design historians to come out of this is
Daniel Millers discussion of alienation (Miller
1987). Using Marx, Weber and Durkheim he
argued that objects are intrinsically alienating.
Consumers then appropriate them through

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their use and customization. Likewise, Dick
Hebdige (1979) wrote of active consumption-again refuting Frankfurt School notions of a
compliant, mass audience --in the context of
youth culture, arguing for its spectacular,
resistant project.
Thus designers can begin to consider the
processes of this consumer appropriation as a
way of understanding their end users. They
can design to such activities as did the
originators of modular furniture and some
computer software packages which allow a
modicum of personal interpretation and
intervention on the object. They can also
move in the opposite direction and invite
their public to become part of the corporate
cultures they represent, thus narrowing the
gap between producer and consumer. Hence
they indulge in what economists Fine and
Leopold (1993: 4) call, the cultural
reconstruction of the meaning of what is
consumed. Hence Ikeas flat-pack culture,
Benettons appeal to consensual politics,
offical supporters clubs and product
helplines.
The analysis of consumption, it should be
stressed does not originate in design history.
Often design historians have taken it on board
to claim an ethically and intellectually higher
moral ground, ending up sometimes with an
ingrained antipathy towards the consideration
of practice (see Buchanan 1998: 261).
Otherwise, attempts have been made to
redefine what design practice may be in order
to fit a consumption model. For instance,
Cheryl Buckley (1998) looks at homeworking
among women in the north-east, connecting
their folk knowledge as consumers to the
innovation of clothing styles. But these are
isolated incidents.
Fine and Leopold address design in terms of
systems of provision, looking at the
interactions which take place along the axis of
conception, production, mediation and use.
This tracing of material and visual culture
along a vertical axis from production to
consumption, from origination, organisation
and processing to social meaning, is one

increasingly adopted by other sociologists

such as Chaney (1996), Lash and Urry (1996).
Meanwhile, some observers have pointed out
how design historians who take a
consumption approach do not clarify what
they understand by the point of consumption
(Meikle 1998: 197)): is it at the moment of
decision making about acquisition, the point
of sale, use and re-use? This criticism isnt
about academic pedantry, it is about a refusal
to come to terms with the questions raised by
making that definition. It maintains a myth of
consumer
empowerment
and
avoids
considering consumer interactions with
production values. It avoids acknowledging
the possibility that consumption is never
static on the vertical axis of systems of
provision, that consumption takes place at
different points, often at different levels, in
the life of products.
In the same way that design historians need
to bridge production and consumption, so
other binary domains require reconciliation.
The divisions between material and visual
culture, or dominant design history and
graphic design history need challenging. As
consultant designer Geoff Hollington tells us,
Design today is very often about creating a
product that fits in some way into a brand
ethos, ideally evolving and stregthening the
brand as it goes. He goes on to note that
Dieter Ramss great contribution to Braun was
not his styling of white goods, but his creation
of a brand identity for the company
(Hollington 1998: 63).
Likewise, the consumption discussion has
focussed almost exclusively on the private
domain without either considering or linking it
to the public sphere. The acquisition of goods
is connected to economic position-- as Miller
has finally admitted (Miller 1997: 14). But it is
also about the articulation of identity. This is
intimately bound up in conceptions of place
or, otherwise, self-knowledge in terms of a
public habitus. In addition, the creeping
privatisation of space-- shopping malls, leisure
and theme parks, toll roads --demands further
enquiry.

6
We do not question the value of history as
discourse, particularly following the era of
Thatchers ignorant historicism or during
Blairs stifling of historical consciousness in
New Britain. But we do ask design history to
return to its roots and bed itself with practice.
And in doing so, the fascinating reflexive
nature of design will be revealed.
Periodic transatlantic debate has taken place
regarding the relative merits of design history
and design studies. We propose the study of
design culture wherein economic decisions in
the marketplace are read as being culturally
informed, and the cultural practices of design
are critically understood. To construct an
economic sociology of design practice would
be a useful starting point.

7
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Consumption London: Routledge

Argent, Patrick (1998) Graphic design is

engulfed
in
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Attfield, Judy Have we ever been modern?

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Hebdige, D. (1979) Subculture: the Meaning of

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